Let's get physical

Over the weekend two of the girls who I went to school with and who I am still close friends with, turned thirty. They held a birthday extravaganza in London, complete with numerous cocktails and dancing until the night turned into morning. Sadly, due to my current state of poverty, I spent the weekend in Dublin. I did receive a number of texts from them, telling me that they were having a great time but that I was missed. It might seem ridiculous, but these few lines of text-speak made all the difference to my mood.

These days we're constantly connected and it means that we never have to miss a thing, in terms of world news or updates from our friends or connections. It's a world in which you can tell someone half way around the globe that you were thinking of them - milliseconds ago - and in which you can send pictures, music and multi-layered experiences in invisible, instant messages.

Recently, I watched a television documentary about Internet addiction. Although I'm quite the fan of the world wide web, I think that I've got my usage under control, however, I am very worried that I will soon have to take my boyfriend to see a psychologist to treat his addiction to all things digital. I'm sure that there are millions out there like him!

Modern communications (is texting still considered modern? We've been texting for a decade, surely by now it's practically old hat!) link us to one and other in networks that previously we were too busy and too lazy to maintain. With the click of a mouse or tap of a dexterous thumb we can send words and love to the next continent, or to the boy next door. This is wonderful and even now, when a lesser invention might have turned stale, the potential of the connected world has the power to take my breath away.

However, we shouldn't exist on a diet of digital alone. Physical contact is the first language that we learn and throughout our lives our senses remain the primary means by which we absorb information about the world around us. I recently read an article in The New York Times, which quoted Matthew Herstein, a psychologist, who had undertaken a study to research our ability to communicate through touch. His study found that through touch alone participants could communicate 8 distinct emotions, with about 70% accuracy. The same article quoted James A Coan, also a psychologist, who suggested that we build relationships to distribute problem solving across our brains and that we communicate signals of support through touch.

However, an article at CNN.com warns of the perils of inappropriate touching. The article is focused on the work environment, but could be applied to other situations. The author notes that people have differing tolerance levels for physical contact and that we should be careful when touching others, even when we believe our touching to be appropriate - put simply, one man's supportive pat on the back, is another man's bullying smack between the shoulder blades.

It's a minefield out there until you establish what's what with the next person's personal space. One thing is for certain, wherever we get it from, to remain sane we need the odd slight of hand, pressure of arm and warm embrace. In The Age I read an article about two people who craved the tiniest physical contacts. One woman who lived alone shopped daily in order to experience the slight physical contact that this entailed. A man who had lost his wife started to attend mass, not for the spiritual relief but for the tactile element of the experience.

Life online is a fantastic supplement to life off line, but when the online world becomes the real world, the line can sometimes go cold. Much can be communicated through text, type, image and video, but so much more is communicated from one person to the next when they are in close proximity. Sometimes what is communicated when two people meet is that one person is uncomfortable or that the other is nervous, but whether the experience is good or terrible, if we could see the streams of communication emanating across the divide, I am sure that what we would be looking at would be an incredibly complex web of information.

This weekend I was very happy to receive texts from my friends and I am always delighted to read emails from those who are far flung and others who I might see weekly, but who I catch up with in byte size portions throughout each day. Some people are worried that we'll one day get lost in the digital world. I'm not worried. We'll always crave something that the coded environment can't give us and that something is human contact; what goes on in the space between two pairs of eyes and the kind of communication that happens when one person shakes hands with another, or when two people sit with their bodies touching.

Give me Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Blogger every day, but there's nothing quite like being there. You can't taste the cocktails in a photograph.

Even Mowgli made friends

My inclination is to try to accept the possibility that any form of existence can be worthwhile. However, this morning (don't ask me why) my mind turned to Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli, the boy who was separated from his parents when they were attacked by a tiger and who was then raised by wolves.

It's all very well to suggest that anybody can forge a meaningful life in any circumstances and, as I have previously written, I'd like to believe that a life can be meaningful even if one does not have the faculty to be aware of its purpose, BUT I for one would loose my mind after just a few weeks without human contact and I don't think that this is an unusual symptom of isolation.

According to secular humanists, we are social creatures who find meaning in personal relations. I agree with this. When I hear that someone is actually attempting to discover the nature of existence by sitting alone in the middle of a forest, I generally consider them to be crazy. The major reason why I think that anyone who does choose to live in isolation is a bit of a nut is because I assume that prolonged loneliness will send even the most sane individual around the bend.

You could tell me until you were blue in the face that to find the meaning of life I must venture into the forest/desert/middle of the sea and remain still and silent until the true nature of my inner self is revealed to me. I'll never believe you. For a start, it sounds to me like this true nature that I would discover might be a hallucination and given that previous hallucinations I have had have taken the form of antelopes and cartoon characters, I'm not sure that I would be any the wiser if I listened to what this 'true self' told me.

Secondly, and more importantly, we are animals who need community, conversation and physical contact. Although Maslow's theories regarding the hierarchy of human needs suggest that those who achieve self-actualisation require less contact with others, in my opinion this detachment seems cold.

And herein lies one of the challenges that I imagine must be faced by great geniuses - if a person chooses to find meaning in one sliver of the realm of experience and to become truly dedicated to this very specialised search for meaning, other aspect of life must often be chopped off at the root and discarded, in order that the flow of energies be directed entirely into whatever the person has made the pet-project of his or her existence. Those who choose to focus their energies in this way are often responsible for the great leaps forward that society can thank for movements in art, masterful music and cures for common diseases.

However, the sacrifice that these people make is immense and in some way I wonder whether those who cannot achieve balance between their work and the softer aspects of human life, sacrifice too much, given that they only get one chance to dance, so to speak.

I'm conscious that it sounds as if I am belittling the contribution of people with focused minds, which I don't want to do. What I do want to draw attention to is this: I believe that the measure of a life may be made in a variety of ways. Some people make one spectacular contribution that positively influences the lives of many. Others quietly go about their quiet lives, supporting the people around them through lifetimes. Some people create meaning from their own actions but other people stand at the intersection of many positive networks of friends and family and support an entire tree and branch system of good feeling. There is no way to attribute a greater value to one, over the other.

Plus, while not all of us enjoy loud mouthed debate or sharing gossip over coffee, every one of us must benefit enormously from tiny interactions with others, which we might not even recall afterwards. Even Mowgli made friends with the animals that Kipling portrayed as having human characteristics. Solemn contemplation is all very good in small doses but there's nothing like a good laugh with great friends, or even strangers. Interactions give meaning that is shared and even if they distract me from considering my true, free, essence of self, I'm pretty sure that I'll be better for them.

And with that I am going to turn off the computer and go out.